Chapter 13

Lauren wheeled around, shocked to see Nicki stumbling forward as if she’d downed an entire bottle of tsipouro. Which would have been a trick, because the girl barely drank enough to give herself a buzz. But you’d never know it given the way she plowed forward, knocking into a small collection of chairs before Stefan reached her.

As usual, the unflappable diplomat was fast and efficient, but Nicki seemed to be overmatching him with her sheer physicality. She flailed her fist, cracking him in the jaw, and even Stefan seemed surprised at the force of the blow. He bent to gather her up, and she sprawled forward, halfway down the stairs, barely keeping her feet.

“Ms. Clark!” Stefan gasped, reaching for her, and his sharp gaze swept to them. “A hand, if you would, Smithson,” he called to Henry. “She’ll hurt herself if she keeps it up.”

“Of course.” Henry didn’t hesitate, but Lauren was so grateful for the reprieve from his touch that she shamefully didn’t move forward to help recover Nicki, who’d begun singing at the top of her lungs—Nicki, who was the worst singer she’d ever met. By the time Henry reached her, Lauren finally recovered her wits. She surged forward as Nicki took her first remarkably well-aimed swing toward Henry, but someone grabbed Lauren’s hand and stopped her cold.

Then Dimitri was right up in her face, the shock of his nearness and the surge of his touch overbalanced only by the intensity of his gaze as he squeezed her arm hard enough to bruise. “Come with me, now. Don’t argue.”

She didn’t so much agree as breathe in his general direction, but that was apparently enough for Dimitri. He yanked her off the veranda and through the torches so quickly, she barely got her skirts up in time to run, and then they were off through the darkness, his hand locked on her wrist and his legs pumping so hard, she was pretty sure he would have dragged her bodily down the lush lawn if she tripped and fell. Luckily, she didn’t.

“Where—where!” was all she could manage as they crested another rise and then were into the trees, the thick knot of forest she’d so admired around Raptis’s mountain home. Dimitri didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. In another hundred feet, the trees cleared enough that she could see the bright moonlight pick out a strip of dirt tracks, the four-wheeler perched atop those tracks barely more than a golf cart.

“Get in,” he said, thrusting her forward, and she moved automatically, responding to the command in his voice. But as she settled into the vehicle and he turned the key—it was a golf cart of sorts, no sound whatsoever emanating from its engine—her brain switched on again.

“I’ll be missed—Nicki!”

“Nicki knew you were in trouble. She created a distraction.” Dimitri’s voice was a harsh growl. It didn’t sound like him at all.

“Stefan...?”

“He wouldn’t have let her do it if he’d known. He was surprised.” He flashed a grin, the first emotion she’d seen on him other than furious intent. “He doesn’t do well with surprises.”

“But they’ll look for me.”

“Most reasonable place you could have gone was back inside to get help. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes. That’s more than enough time to get you off the mountain.”

Lauren flopped back in her seat. “No, this is all too much, Dimitri. You’ll just piss Henry off, and he’s not a man who likes to be pissed off. Better for me simply to face him.”

“Not going to happen.” The golf cart intersected with a larger road, closer to the main highway that had brought them here, and another vehicle stood there, a hulking heavy-duty truck. “Into the truck.”

“No! I have to?— ”

“Into the truck or I’ll put you there, princess. I do not have time to fuck around here.” He lunged for her, and she jumped back, but her options were pretty limited. It was the truck or the forest, and Dimitri was her assigned bodyguard. She had to trust him, though he was making things so much worse. By the time she’d hauled herself up into his monster truck and buckled in, he’d already gunned the engine to life and they were off again, bouncing onto the road and shooting forward at high speed.

Dimitri started talking again. “Smithson had additional vehicles here tonight. They showed up as the party went on. All three of them alike. There is no doubt he would have left with you and possibly your parents in one of those vehicles, or, more likely, you and him together and your parents in a second limo, under some pretext of a drink back at the hotel or a tour of his yacht or some other bullshit that would sound both polite and reasonable. We would have lost track of you, and then you’d be in the wind.”

“But you’re overreacting. You’re doing this all wrong!” Desperation rocketed through her. “You can’t simply stick me in some sort of mountain chateau the way you did with Emmaline. These are my parents! They’ll be looking for me. Henry will be looking for me. If he suspects the royal family had anything to do with my disappearance, he’ll create the biggest media crapstorm you could possibly imagine until I’m released.”

“He won’t suspect the royal family. They didn’t order me to follow you outside. They didn’t order Nicki and Stefan to create a distraction. As far as anyone will know, you ran away and hid, and someone is either harboring you or you’re using your own considerable connections to escape an unpleasant situation. Your parents will not make a public stink about it until they understand the fallout back to them.”

“But I can’t truly hide, Dimitri. That’s not reasonable. Which means sooner or later, this is going to end very badly for me.”

“Maybe. But it beats the alternative.” Dimitri yanked his phone out of his pocket and tossed it into her lap. “Scroll through the pictures.”

She picked up the device. There was no pass code, and a simple swipe showed her he’d already been in the text app. The first pic was a snapshot of a document, and she frowned, brushing the screen with her fingertips to stretch it wide.

She flinched. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Marriage certificate, prenup, all your asset-transfer paperwork. Everything that’s yours, now and in the future, will be his. Neatly done. We found that in your parents’ suite aboard the Smithson yacht. There’s another copy in Henry’s.”

“Do I want to know how you got past Smithson’s security?”

“You do not.” Dimitri angled onto another road, and she got the sense they were heading away from the capital city and down, toward the sea. “So far, no one has seen these documents except me. Cyril and the king will receive copies if and when it’s appropriate.”

“Plausible deniability.” Lauren shook her head. “I didn’t think you’d need that in a monarchy.”

“It’s never a bad policy. Brace yourself.”

Without more warning, Dimitri braked hard and cut the wheel, and they slid off the main road and down a path that was little more than a goat track. Trying not to squeal like a six-year-old girl, Lauren grabbed on to the door, the ceiling bar, anything she could get her hands on as they bounced and roared over skittering rocks and precipitous drops. Eventually the road evened out again, but she was swimming with vertigo by the time the trees opened up onto a narrow strip of sand. Ahead, she could see a legitimate road feeding onto the beach, a few picnic tables scattered around. Off into the water was a boat, its prow lit up with a single light.

“What was wrong with the road?” she asked, unsurprised that her voice was shaking.

Dimitri shrugged. “Shortcut. We get out here.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer but got out of the truck. For a moment, however, Lauren froze. She had no phone. She had no money. She had nothing to wear but the clothes on her back, and no one to trust but this brute of a bodyguard who listened to absolutely nothing she said, despite the fact that she was the one speaking reason and he was the one hustling her into a boat to go God only knew where.

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” she muttered as Dimitri jerked the door open and reached up a brawny hand for hers.

“Let’s get moving, princess,” he growled.